As said below, tonight will be more on the Senate race, but for those junkies out there, with Gephardt out of the race, Missouri is being invaded by Democratic Presidential Candidates. Most of my efforts through February 3rd will be on that issue and at the companion site,Blog Saint Louis

Come on over and visit. I’m working on getting into the possible debate at UMSL on Monday night.

So the last guy to do Blueberry Hill didn’t do so well (Bill Bradley), but John Edwards will be visiting Wednesday night:

Senator John Edwards will be coming to St. Louis on Wednesday night
to give a speech at Blueberry Hill in the U. City Loop.

This is your chance to come see the man about whom James Carville
says: "He is the single best stump speaker I have ever seen run for
president in my life." If Senator Edwards ends up winning the
nomination, Carville suggested "not only that he give the acceptance
speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, but he also
give the keynote. I think he’s good enough to give both of them."

So please come join us at Blueberry Hill, and see the speech that
everyone is talking about.

It’s back and ready for the last two months until the Senate Primary. And I’m psyched–so leave your comments on who is up, who is down, and who is just crazy. And ask Eric Zorn when we are getting the Vic Roberts Interview…(Damn Roberts dropped out)

So Let’s Hear it for the Candidates—

Gery Chico

Estella Johnson-Hunt

Blair Hull

Dan Hynes

Barack Obama

Maria Pappas

Nancy Skinner

Joyce Washington

Frank Avila is not on the ballot (AFAICT), Vic Roberts dropped in November and Matt O’Shea saw the obvious and endorsed Gery Chico.

Glenn Brown even gave me a post, and I still didn’t get around to it. But here it is. I think it contains some very interesting and important observations:

I was at the IVI-IPO endorsement session this weekend and it was a complete shambles. As someone who has personally admired the organization from afar for many years it was strange to see the "man behind the curtain."

I will begin with the results of the voting for all who are impatient for those things. Barack Obama’s name was put into nomination for endorsement and a sole endorsement was voted down by a small margin. Partially, this was due to the fact that a representative of the hynes campaign accused the Obama campaign of having recieved a list of IVI-IPO members and calling them to get them out to the vote – something that the Obama campaign denies but there was no chance to rebut this nor was there any evidence of this provided beyond some anecdotal comments by people who said they had been called by the campaign.

The final vote was a joint endorsement of both Hynes and Obama – in other words it was irrelevant. However, the possibility of a single-candidate endorsement still exists because the vote, while a majority, did not reach the 60% threshold to guarantee this will be the endorsement. The IVI-IPO board will decide the endorsement with this "reccomendation" of the membership. The vote personally upset me because I am a supporter of Baracks but also because Barack worked for the organization and has been recognized by it for his great work on many occasions. Hynes, on the other hand, could not take the time to show up at the televised candidate forum of a couple of months ago.

Some other things I have noticed that startled me:

1) What was probably most startling to me was that it was common knowledge that campaigns bought seats for their supporters – I must confess that this was true both for Obama and for Hynes although it was clear that Hynes paid for more seats.

2) There was an incredible lack of control over the meeting. – and, as a matter of fact, most of those who were disruptive were clearly long-time members of the organization.

3) Contributing to the lack of control was a general lack of civility on the part of all parties concerned. Examples:

– Several people literally shouted at Dan Hynes during the question and answer phase – many of them also clearly long-time members.

– There was a section of the meeting where people were to point out areas where each candidate disagreed with the finer points of IVI-IPO’s political platform. When a woman stood up and asked for a copy because she did not know the whole platform she was chided by the chairperson who said "people who join the organization should already know where we stand on the issues." The chairperson later stated that she did not know where IVI-IPO stood on banning handguns!

What struck me about the organization was that it was an ingrown, extremely disfunctional group who uses these sessions as a fundraising tactic for it’s organization. They took no real great effort to encourage showing up at this session – despite the fact that it this would be the primary endorsement session of the year. Their description of the event in their newsletter was misleading and I suspect they were hoping for some iteration of what actually happend – that the vote session would not be final so that the central comittee could choose who they wanted.

What I noticed about the campaigns:

What we saw at this meeting could very well be the story of the race. The Obama camp was very passionate. The Hynes camp countered that by being extremely organized. This was true down to having handouts literally stating the way they wanted this to go – they were shooting for a joint endorsement to nullify it for the Obama campaign and give the news cycle to hynes with the AFL-CIO endorsement.

I have to say that I plan on resigining from the organization because I was so disappointed.

OK, I’m finishing up another series of antibiotics and starting to feel better. So I should be back tomorrow sometime (today is Ms. ArchPundit’s Birthday).

That said

1) Campaigns organized to turn out new voters never turn out that way–see Donkey Rising for more on that. Dean’s bluster on new voters isn’t nearly as compelling as people keep claiming.
2) But, Campaigns with the most money in the primary almost always win
3) John Kerry is acting like a human being again
4) John Edwards was a mystery–he was running a great campaign and wasn’t getting traction. Apparently that traction came later.
5) Dean is a bigger winner than people realize last night. There is now space for an anti-Dean, but three serious candidates to fill it. They have to turn away from attacks on Dean and attack each other. Clark vs. Kerry will be the worst with Edwards being the voice of optimism. Meaning welcome to the Dean vs. Edwards race. Dean has the money, one of the other three have to rise to the top. Attacking each other drags down poll numbers for candidates in a tit-for-tat and so Edwards gets the free pass.
6) Bob Graham will be the VP candidate with the general election triggering a Jeb vs. Bob showdown in Florida. Graham fills in holes for Dean and Edwards, reinforces Kerry’s background in foreign affairs and provides a Southern duo with Clark.

but aren’t the repeated attacks on the State Board of Education comparing them to the Soviets a bit overboard? While I admittedly often compared Normal Community High School to a gulag, I wasn’t giving the State of the State speech at the age of 16.

When not so much applause followed G-Rods statement on in-state tuition for undocumented workers, he thanked State Senator Iris Martinez. Given this is a bit of a hot potato, it really came off as a sarcastic thanks even though I’m sure he meant it as a compliment for her work on the bill.